Why isn't $KMVAR variable displayed in terminal with an echo command?

[ComplexPoint]

Two different scopes, I think. The shell environment invoked in a KM script action is not the same as that invoked by terminal.app. Slightly different shells, and they don't automatically share environment variables.

I think you will see your variable if you run an echo command from a KM Execute Shell Script action.

(compare the output of the printenv command in both (terminal.app and KM shell action), including the values of variables like $PATH and $LANG, which are not automatically exported)

PS Peter's update at the bottom of this thread is helpful:

Detecting the Terminal.app locale (LC_TYPE) from KM

Problem: What is the best way to detect, from a KM macro, the locale ($LC_CTYPE) setting in a users's Terminal.app /bin/bash settings ? (not the same as the LC_TYPE value in KM's Execute shell script /bin/sh Context: The character count given by the bash wc -m filename in a Keyboard Maestro Execute a shell script action can differ significantly from that given by wc -m in Terminal.app, and this means that scripts which work well in Terminal.app may behave incorrectly in Keyboard Maestro. Thi…